for head of practice at city center. It is my honor to speak with you this evening. It is also my honor to be leading the spring practice period. This is the first talk of that spring practice period. It will last six weeks. I would like to thank Abbott David Zimmerman for inviting me to lead this practice period. It is An amazing honor to do so and a rare opportunity. So thank you very much, Abbott David. So tonight is the first talk of a series of nine talks that I will be giving over the next six weeks. And we'll have supplemental talks by visiting teachers on Saturdays, which will add to the topic. The topic for this next six weeks will be the Lojong teachings.

[01:06]

Lo means mind, and jang means training. So these will be on the mind training teachings. So why now? Why this topic right now? This is a time when we could do two things. One is we could curl up in our houses, isolate ourselves, not only socially but emotionally, spiritually. We could be alone and scared. So that's one thing we could do. is to work, practice, study in order to open ourselves up to the possibilities that exist right now.

[02:10]

And there are possibilities. Study is one possibility. Engaging in various kinds of contact is possible. Talking to people that you haven't talked to for a long time is possible. So in this very odd time, There are many, many possibilities. And so one of the things that I propose and that many of you have taken up is that we study together and we sit together to integrate those teachings into our bodies and our minds. So this is a traditional practice period. And in Buddhism, in the past, groups... Sangha's communities have got together for a set period of time, often 90 days, to study a text together, to sit, to integrate that material, to have friends to share with and to take on the teachings and absorb them.

[03:19]

So this is what the intention of the practice period is, and this is my hope for the next six weeks, is that we learn together and work on these materials. And why these specific materials? I have been practicing with these teachings for... 21 years. So when I first started studying as a student of Buddhism, I was introduced to these teachings and they were interesting to me. And I don't think I really, I read the books. I talked to people about it, but I don't think they really penetrated. And it's only been as a matter of years and study and teaching that I've realized the importance to me of these teachings. And so I was very excited to be offered this opportunity to share some of my interest and excitement about these particular things.

[04:26]

So training is an interesting idea. I want to tell a... Story from my past about training. I guess about 20 years ago or more, 25 years ago, I had a pup. So a partner and I got a small dog, and she was in Airedale, very boisterous and very lovely. And we decided we were going to train her. We wanted her to be part of our family. And so we took her to puppy school and we spent a lot of time with her. And this was an ongoing thing. It's not something that you can, many of you who know about dogs and dog training, you can't just hope that the dog will start doing the things you want.

[05:31]

So there was this engagement with this animal, and we worked with her over a number of years, actually. And sometimes it was very frustrating. Sometimes it was delightful. Sometimes she seemed to learn very quickly. Sometimes she didn't learn so quickly. And so I remember this one particular instance. This was after about four years of... teaching her to heal properly and calm and settle and stay and all those commands that you do with the dog. And I was taking her for a walk, and we were walking in front of this woman. And when we would come to a street corner, I would stop. The dog would sit down. We'd kind of look at each other, and then when we proceeded again, The dog would look at me and I'd start walking. And then so we'd cross the street.

[06:33]

And this happened for a number of blocks. And the dog was wonderful. And so we were stopping at a block and this woman came up behind me and she said, boy, are you ever lucky you have a well-trained dog? And I remember looking at her kind of shocked because that... That activity that the dog and I were engaged in in that moment had nothing to do with luck. That was years of perseverance and engagement with her, correction, active reinforcement over and over and over again. So this is how I approach training the mind. So when we first start working with our minds, they are like a wild horse, as it is said in the Tenzo Kyokun.

[07:34]

Our mind does what it wants. The job of the mind is to create thoughts. Often those thoughts are not coherent, or they don't flow, or things pop into our minds that we're unaware of. And training the mind, takes effort and work and engagement. So for me anyway, I believe in this kind of engagement. I've seen it work in myself. I've seen it work with other people. I've seen it work with a very loved pet. And so I think the slogans for me represent, or the mind training represents an activity that's practical, and engaging for me. I also think it's important to say that many of us, we already live with slogans. Maybe we call them something else, but I think they're with us all the time.

[08:39]

And a few of those examples would be, it's a dog-eat-dog world. No pain, no gain. These messages that pop into our heads, there used to be, I know my mother used to say a lot of these things, a stitch in time saves nine. So I think for many of us, we have messages that pop into our minds, and they pop in over and over. Another one that is very common in our society is, I'm fat. I don't want to get fat or I'm not very smart. So these things, I think, come into our minds and they bind us to a certain belief system. Retraining that takes a lot of time and patience and care.

[09:45]

And so over the next six weeks, my hope is that I can, inspire each of you if you're willing to take up this challenge to engage in this training so the the messages that come freely to your mind are those of a bodhisattva those of a person who wants to engage with the rest of the world those of a person who in this time rather than closing down and becoming isolated opens to the challenges of the moment. And those challenges are vast. I have no ability to argue what a challenging time we're living in right now. And I hope that these slogans will lead us to feel like we're... helping ourselves to open to what's actually happening in the world.

[10:51]

I wanted to talk a little bit about the history of the slogans, because for me, this is a very important piece of this puzzle. So... There was a... They are often referred to as the slogans of Atisha. And Atisha was an Indian Buddhist teacher who lived between 982 and 1054. He was an amazing student, an amazing scholar, an amazing Buddhist teacher. Very, very quick, intellectually gifted, was appointed to a university at a very young age. And he was born of a noble family in North India, Northern India. An amazing Buddhist practitioner. And I have read that over the course of his life, he studied with 150 teachers, Buddhist teachers.

[12:04]

And he absorbed their teachings. He had a vast treasury of knowledge. And he taught that. In my study of him, I read that during his early life, he absorbed all these teachings and he ordained at 29. So he was a monastic and he was teaching as a monastic. And then at some point, he heard about these compassion teachings. And he hadn't... heard about these specific compassion teachings. And so he was very interested in this and he started trying to trace where the teacher was who was talking about these compassion teachings. And he, he heard that there was a teacher in Indonesia then called Sumatra.

[13:12]

So he, He traveled from northern India. He got on to various boats and traveled to Indonesia, then Sumatra. This journey took 13 months. It involved a shipwreck, and it involved lots of... lot of hardship so it was an epic journey it wasn't like now we could jump on a plane obviously this was around the first turn of the first century or the the 10th century so he traveled there he he got to the land um to indonesia and then he started asking around again about these compassion teachings and he he went around the island and he heard that there was this teacher named Dharmakirti. And so he found out where this fellow was teaching and he went to the place where he was known and he started asking other people, like, do you know this person?

[14:25]

Do you know who Dharmakirti is? What do you think of his teachings? And... Everybody apparently said, oh, yes, you must meet this man. He's an amazing teacher. So after kind of interviewing people, he actually met Dharmakirti. And in the conversation, he said, I have traveled a long way, and I'm very interested in these compassion teachings. Would you teach me? And Dharmakirti said, sort of interviewed him, tested him a little bit to see if he was serious, what he was thinking of. And I guess the upshot of that conversation was that Dharmakirti said, yes, I will teach you. And you have to stay and study with me for 12 years because it'll take 12 years for you to understand these teachings and to be able to pass this along.

[15:29]

if you ever want to be empowered with these teachings. So Atisha agreed to stay. And he stayed for 12 years and he worked with Dharmakirti and he learned these teachings and he was empowered to teach them. These were secret teachings at the time. And this is partly why Atisha, in his travels, had to kind of ask, and it wasn't really known where these were from. And as I said, out of all of his teachers, all of his 150 teachers, this was the only one that had ever mentioned these particular teachings. So at the end of 12 years, Atisha goes back to northern India, and he... He became the abbot of Nalanda, and he studied there. I mean, he taught there, and he was very careful with these teachings because he thought they were very powerful, and he wanted to be sure of who he would pass them on to.

[16:48]

In the meantime, in Tibet, There was a resurgence in Buddhist study, and teachers from India were being invited to go to Tibet to work with the Tibetans and to spread the teachings. So in Tibet, they heard about Atisha, and he was asked repeatedly to come to Tibet to teach. Eventually, he decided that he would go, so he went to Tibet. And he had three particular students, and he passed these teachings on to one of those students. And he died in 1054 at the age of 72, which he was a relatively elderly man, and he had a lot of travel in his life, and he had... mastered many of these teachings, and he had heirs, like dharma heirs, that he passed these onto.

[17:55]

These teachings remained secret for a number of years with one heir, and there was this idea that the person holding the teachings would pass them on to somebody when he deemed that person was worthy of the teachings. So they were passed through different Tibetan teachers. And then there was a teacher, a particular teacher named Geshe Chikawa, who lived between 1102 and 1176. And he stumbled upon these teachings. He was in visiting a friend of his, and he read a passage that sort of was something he'd never seen before, or an idea he'd never thought of before.

[19:01]

And he asked about that, and this person said, oh, those are those compassion teachings. They're Atisha's teachings. And so, again... Geshe Chikawa started looking around and asking around, and then he requested to receive these teachings. And again, the request was that he study for 12 years with the teacher so he could master these slogans, and he agreed to do this. So in his 12 years, what he did was he took the forms of the teachings that Etisha had, and he changed those to make the 59 slogans. So the 59 slogans are actually a product of Geshe Chikawa's interpretation of Etisha's slogans, which were then from his teacher, Dharmakirti.

[20:03]

So it was a warm hand to warm hand transmission through more than 100 years. And Geshe Chikawa, in changing these to 59 slogans, started thinking that they were precious and also to keep them completely secret was a shame. So he started passing them around more freely, still carefully, but not secret, not from one person to a Dharma heir. So he passed these more widely, and they became known through all the schools in Tibet as the compassion teachings, the mind training slogans, and they were practiced much more widely. And then in the 1800s, a Tibetan master, Jamgan Kontrol, again, collected these teachings in a way that sort of popularized them, made them more accessible.

[21:11]

And there's a translation of that book by Ken MacLeod called The Great Path of Awakening that outlines the form of the 59 slogans as they were taught in the 1800s by Janggun Kontrol. These teachings then come to America by way of some various Tibetan practitioners. And the first translation I ever read was by Chogam Trungpa Rinpoche, who produced a number of talks. He first exposed his senior students to them in 1975 at one of his Vajrayana seminaries. And then there was some work That was done as a result of that collection of his lectures, plus other lectures where he referred to this.

[22:18]

The book called Training the Mind came out. And then to follow further how it gets to Zen is that in North America, in the West, there is sort of this cross-pollination for... Tibetan practitioners, Zen practitioners, information or practices that seem to resonate through the disciplines. And I feel very fortunate that Norman Fisher picked up these teachings in the early part of the last millennia. And I think 2007 was, or eight, somewhere like that. Sorry, I didn't look up that date. And he wrote a book where he uses the slogans as a basis, and that book is called Training in Compassion. So these are teachings that now are freely available.

[23:27]

If you look on the internet and type up the Lojong slogans or the Mind Training slogans, Many, many, many entries pop up, and I would say they are practiced by many different practitioners, and many of you have been exposed to them as a result of Pema Chodron's teachings. She wrote a book called Start Where You Are, and she's lectured on them many times. I was fortunate enough to be living at Gampo Abbey when... She did a series of lectures on the Lojong training in 2000. So I received the teachings that way and have studied them ever since. So that's in a nutshell the history of the transmission. Very brief.

[24:29]

But I wanted to give you all a perspective of that, partly because in our culture, we often are impatient. We want to learn things. We want to change very quickly. We think, oh, well, I'm not liking that, so I'm going to change that. Or I don't like this situation, so I'm going to change that. I don't like, I wish I were more kind. I'm going to do something about that. And that's certainly one approach. Often it's not very successful. I think to take the idea of our mind and change our mind is very difficult. So to have some practices around opening, around softening, around allowing for change is a different approach, I think.

[25:33]

It's a growth approach rather than a strength approach. It's kind of an opening and softening approach. And I believe that these slogans do that. The point of the slogans and the practices that are associated with the slogans So we can see our minds and move in a different direction. And I read a passage that Ken McLeod wrote in his introduction to the great path of awakening. And when I read this sentence, something clicked for me. And so I wanted to read it briefly. And it's sort of like, have any of you ever used Lego blocks? And when they click together, it's like such an excellent feeling.

[26:38]

You know, it's like, oh, that fits. So for me, this sentence has, it allowed something to click. And he says, this is again, Ken McLeod in the introduction to Great Path of Awakening. In this system, one's way of experiencing situations in everyday life is transformed into a way a bodhisattva might experience those situations. So I'll read that again. In this system of Lojong training, one's way of experiencing situations in everyday life is transformed into a way a bodhisattva might experience those situations. So I take the vow every day, the bodhisattva vow every day to save all beings. And I don't know how to do that.

[27:39]

It's an impossible vow. I think many of us take that vow every day. Many of us have the aspiration to help people, to help beings, to be helpful in the world, to be helpful to our families, love deeply, to support people in need. These are aspirations many of us have. And how do we do that? It's so difficult. It's so difficult to know what to do. And we get scared. We think, oh, I'd like to help them. And then we get scared. We, or I think, so if I help that person, what will... What will be the effects of that? Will it affect me? And working with these slogans allow us to be braver, I think. They allow us to be open to the world, to think better of the world.

[28:49]

There's... Slogan number 21 is always maintain only a joyful mind. This is as impossible as the bodhisattva vow of saving all beings. And I recognize that. But for me, if that thought is floating through my mind, if the slogan always maintain only a joyful mind is in my mind and there, What it does is it keeps the other thought, which is, what does this person want? Why are they bugging me? It keeps those kind of thoughts as they're quieter. So as the slogans... um, get more present in my mind, the other thoughts, the more unwholesome thoughts get quieter. And that's how it's worked for me over the years. And I am by no means, um, free of unwholesome thoughts.

[29:54]

I would never, never, ever, um, say that that were true. And I, I think that, um, working with these slogans has been incredibly positive for me and helpful. Um, There's slogan number 11 is, when the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps to the path of Bodhi. And I would say right now, the world is filled with a lot of uncertainty. We could call it evil. We could call the virus evil, maybe. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but certainly the world is filled with uncertainty. And so is it possible for me to remember that, to remember to try to transform these mishaps into the path of bodhi, chitta, into compassion? Can I take care of myself in a loving way?

[30:56]

Can I take care of other people in a loving way? So this is the direction of this next six weeks. And I wanted to just say a little bit specifically about what's coming up for those of you who are curious about sort of what's on the agenda for practice periods. So we have an online Zendo now and also that is, there's a schedule and we're all, all of us. given that we're social distancing, are sitting together online. So there's this online Zendo, and we do morning Zazen, late afternoon Zazen, and some evening Zazen together. There's Wednesday and Saturday talks. There's going to be a one-day sit this Saturday with a full day of sitting. We have practice period classes.

[32:00]

So Zach Smith, Zachary Smith is leading a practice period class on Monday nights on the five ranks. Victoria Austin, Wednesday morning, is doing a yoga class where she will be talking about specific slogans. And I'll be leading a practice period class on Saturday mornings, which will talk more about various aspects of the slogans. There'll be small group meetings on Thursdays. And there'll be other days offered. And then there'll be a three-day sashim on June 4th to 6th. So my intention for this practice period is to go over this material, to kind of spiral around and down to get more familiar, to have these ideas swirl around for people to do a little memorization maybe.

[33:02]

to work at these slogans. And I wanted to show you, when I was the Fuguten at Tassahara, I started studying the slogan seriously, and I made these flashcards. So some of you, this is laughable probably for younger people. But for me, I used to carry these around everywhere. And when I was waiting in a line or something, I would just start rifling through the 59 slogans and using those to memorize. So many people did that when I was younger to learn languages. So these have been in my life since 2010. And... When I'm traveling, I take them and I review these over and over again. And the purpose of that for me is so I know, so the slogans are at the sort of front part of my brain instead of buried somewhere in the back of my brain.

[34:14]

So that's what's coming up a little bit. So I think at this point, I'll open it up to a couple of questions. And for this, I'll ask for Kodo's help as the host. So thank you all very much for being with me this evening. And I look forward to more talks and seeing you over the next weeks. Great. Thank you, Mary. For anyone who would like to pose a question or... make a comment. You can find a way to raise your hand by opening the participants window. And that should reveal a raise hand button. So please feel invited. We have about nine minutes. is Terry Baum, and I will unmute you.

[35:38]

Hey, Terry. Hi, Mary. Nice to see you. Nice to see you, too. Do you feel that memorizing is an essential part of working with the lojo? Great question. For me, it has been because it allows me to think about them. For example, I can give you an example. I was in the senior staff meeting this morning and one of the fellows checked in and he said, he was talking about something and he said, Mary, give me a slogan. And I said, I give you number 30, which is don't be so predictable. So for me, because they're available to my mind, I can bring them out into situations. And also then it's a reminder for me to not be so predictable.

[36:45]

So that is very helpful for me. So I appreciate that there are some Zen teachers that are really interested in memorization, memorizing of sutras, memorizing of chants, you know, as a way to kind of spark our interest. a way to engage our mind. So I think memorization is a really cool thing. What do you think about memorization? Yeah. I've never, I mean, I'm in theater, so of course I memorize all the time, but I've never memorized poems or anything like that. So yeah, the idea that you could just leap forward with a slogan. May we all do it. It's very interesting to me. Thank you very much, Terry. We'll see you. Yes, definitely. Adam Winkler will be next.

[37:51]

Great. Hi there. Oh, hi. I had a question about Lojong. Specifically, I heard, I don't know very much at all about Lojong, but I did have the impression that there are some meditation practices too that have something to do with Lojong. Or is it, yeah, I guess, are there slogans? Are there other aspects too? That's my question. Definitely there are. So there are, Tong Glen is one of the practices embedded in the Lojong slogans. So the Lojong slogans sort of open up. You get one slogan that is a whole world, and one of those is number seven, which is, Sending and taking can be practiced alternatively.

[39:05]

These two ride the breath. And that is this whole practice called Tonglen. And so we'll be looking at that during the practice period. And I'll be giving specific instructions about how to do Tonglen. And we'll be doing guided meditations around Tonglen. So thank you for asking. Thank you. Mary, Vicky is posing a question. Her internet doesn't allow for video, so she asked through the chat. She says, I'm wondering what Mary would have to say about how to practice from the body to the brain. Often we think we're following a practice, but it is very easy to think that without doing the practice at all levels of who we are. For instance, we might practice it socially. Our hands and our feet might practice it without the lower back coming along.

[40:07]

Any words of wisdom on thoroughness? Thank you, Vicki. I think one of the great things about these teachings for me is that they are an integration. They are integration practice. I memorize, and then through the memory work, a slogan comes to mind, and I live that slogan through conversation, through embodying it in my body. Slogan number 35 is don't try to be the fastest. This work allows both a body settledness and also intellectual settledness.

[41:13]

They're very practical teachings. And I think also there are specific, as Adam just asked in the last question, there are specific meditation practices. So the meditation practices are the Tonglen practices, and then the slogans are the post-meditation practices that we do outside of the context of Zazen. So these two work together, and the body must be involved in the study of this for it to be effective. I never think that we can be effective with our training if our body's not involved as well. So there's a settling. There's incorporation, there's practice, repetition. So all of these things are involved. And I hope that that addresses or touches into your question a little bit.

[42:24]

It looks like we have time for one more question. The next on the list is Greg Tippett. Hello? Hey, Greg. Oh, hey. So the thing that struck me or one of the things that really struck me from your talk was that, you know, originally these were kept secret. And I don't I mean, I imagine that there's a lot of sort of historical knowledge there. I don't necessarily expect it. that you would have all the historical context, but I'm curious about what you would know about that or what your thoughts are on... It's sort of hard to imagine, I think, in a culture with Wikipedia as a primary reference point, that something would be kept secret that was like compassion trainings. Anyway, I'm curious about your thoughts on that. Yeah. So I think in a lot of Tibetan practices, and I'm sure this is true about Zen as well, that there was this feeling of working with a teacher and getting to a certain point in your practice or your stability, and then you would get more information, you know, or they would take you to a different, they give you a different set of problems, you know, different koan in the language of Zen, you know.

[43:55]

And I think it was thought that the sort of the level, the Koan level of these Lojang teachings were very high. And I went to a teaching many years ago and the teacher said, oh, you Westerners, you're so funny. So you come to me and you say, give me a teaching. And so I give you a teaching. And then the next year you come and you say, can I have another teaching? And she said, and I say, did you practice the teaching I gave you last year? And they say, no, I didn't really, but I want a new one, you know? And so this is the problem of the West. It's like acquisition, acquisition. Whereas I think the idea in the past was that you really work on something for a while, and then your teacher is the one that decides if you get the new thing. And so I think the idea of... Being stable enough to allow yourself to feel like your heart is really open is not such an easy thing.

[45:03]

So that's part of this practice is like understanding that we have this tender, tender heart that we're taking care of. And in order to show that to ourselves and to other people, that takes quite a bit of stability. So I think that's partly why they were. And maybe the word secret is a little heavy for us. Maybe I should say that they were completely precious teachings. And so they were held very carefully and passed along very carefully. Does that get at it? Yeah, I think I'm getting it. The internet was cutting out for a little bit at the end there, so I missed your last couple sentences. But I think you're... So I feel like the question that comes next is, you know, do I am I ready to receive these teachings? All right.

[46:07]

All right. We're all going to give it a stab together, Greg. All right. I'll start making those flashcards. Great. That's the best you can do. Thank you. Make flashcards. Shall we close, Mary? Yeah, let's. Let's call it a night. I look forward to seeing you all again soon. Thank you very much. We'll finish up with the closing chant. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with a true merit of Buddha's way. Things are numberless, I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them.

[47:08]

Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to be coming. Thank you very much, everyone.

[47:28]

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